MEPs have backed the biggest reform plan in the history of the EU's ill-starred fisheries policy - vowing to restore fish stocks after years of failed conservation measures and to return profitability to fishing communities.

Measures approved in a vote in Strasbourg include banning within three years the current practice of dumping dead fish back in the sea - a consequence of current Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) rules restricting the size of landed catches under a complex system of quotas.

The deal also offers more control over managing the CFP to regional fishing organisations - although some UK politicians have been demanding nothing less than the scrapping of the CFP altogether and the "repatriation" of fisheries policy.

But no final deal is done until a last stage - a three-way negotiation involving MEPs, EU fisheries ministers and the European Commission.

But the fact that the European Parliament now has "co-decision" powers over fishing policy means more clout for the measures MEPs and the Commission have put on the table.

EU fisheries ministers have been accused for years of ignoring the science about the need for reduced fishing to deliver long-term stock recovery. The priority of national governments, complain critics, has been to win the biggest catch allowances regardless of conservation.

The Commission has warned that failure to police agreed catch limits has also played a hand in failure to deliver the long-promised recovery of key stocks and halt the decline of fishing communities.

As the vote went through, CFP reform campaigners outside the European Parliament building were still calling for clear measures to end the practice of "discards" - dumping surplus fish back into the sea to avoid breaching quotas.

Ahead of the vote, EU Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki - who once admitted the CFP was "broken" - said almost a quarter of all fish caught were currently being dumped at sea.

She said the deal, if finally confirmed as planned by the end of June, would boost fish stocks by 15 million tonnes by 2020 and increase fish landings for fleets by half a million tonnes. Fishing incomes would rise by 25%, with a third more jobs created.